Viljanen

Just the same game republished once again. No matter the price tag, don't reward them with your money. Buy Cities Skylines instead if you feel like city building.

They have managed to capture the spirit of classic Transport Tycoon. Sadly, the UI is unfinished and the game balance is a little bit off (trains are too expensive and there is nearly not enough demand for all the industrial goods). The developers have been busy releasing patches and if they keep on improving this game, it could very well become a classic.

I can't recommend Platinum version to anyone who already has any previous versions of this game. They haven't implemented any performance improvements so the game still suffers from lag when you have a huge city. The only extras in the platinum version are a couple of new buildings. I've spent a lot of hours with this game but the performance issues eventually makes playing it a chore.

Great improvement over the EU3 with new trade system, better graphics and the interesting monarch points system. Release version is bug-free and quite balanced.

The game is laggy and ugly even on my relatively good computer. I'm not going to play it until it is patched and hopefully optimized and I can't recommend it to anyone. I feel sorry I preordered this unfinished game. At the moment it is the ugliest Total war game ever. The graphics look like they are 10 years old.

My main disappointments with Patrician IV were the bland and boring graphics and the arcade-style sea combat. RoaD delivers some really nice improvements to the graphics, making the game much more enjoyable to play. Unfortunately the sea combat is till a boring clickfest, the predecessor Patrician III had much more deep and interesting approach to the fights. Nevertheless, trading, not fighting, is the main focus of the game and it feels much nicer with Rise of a Dynasty. In addition to better graphics this add-on also adds an extra feature of inland towns and land trade routes which are nice extra challenge for the player.

I can't really say how Cities in Motion was at release but as of now, June 2012 with all the patches and some DLCs it is stable and very playable. Sure the performance could be better and the campaign quests are quite silly but nevertheless it is addictingly fun to play. Definetly recommended for gamers who like simulation style games.

The game is as addictive as Annos always are. It is great for city-building/management games fans: nice graphics and always something to tweak or improve. I should complain that much of the game is recycled from Anno 1404 and while there are many new things, essentially the game feels much like future total conversion of 1404. Other things I'm a bit disappointed is the lack of proper AI-opponents in continuous play. Instead you only get NPC-type third parties that do expand and interact with you. I'm not yet 100% sure if I like them a bit less or much less than "real" AIs. Overall I find myself spending hours and hours of time playing this game which should be enough to speak for itself. This game is hardly innovative as almost 90% of the content has been seen in previous Anno-games in some form or another but it is high quality and well refined.

This game has somewhat unique approach to city-building and resource management with its flow resources and areas of effect. After an expansion and some updates it is enjoyable to play. The graphics are nice and you can see your citizens going about their business in the city. I think the biggest drawbacks of this game is that is a bit too easy after the initial city is set up. Once the denarii start rolling in the game becomes super-easy and you can do whatever you want. Also many of the buildings, especially the high-level research buildings are almost useless. The economy could use some rebalancing. If you are a fan of city-builders and liked Caesar IV I'd recommend you buy this game as it shouldn't be very expensive by now.

Paradox games are generally only playable after their first expansion by which most of the worst bugs and imbalances are ironed out (EU 3 is an exception that took more than one expansions to be the great game it currently is). I think this is also true for Victoria II even though it was released much more finished than the horrible HOI 3. The good thing about Paradox interactive is that they actively keep updating their games even several months and years after their release. As of the current version the game still suffers from many small problems but it has an active modding community and an expansion on its way.

Cities XL series is a really promising successor for SimCity but unfortunately it suffers from really bad memory leak problems which make the game unenjoyable for me. It is a shame as there are not many city builder game available. With the introduction of modding tools in Cities XL 2012, the game really has potential for a classic but Focus has to focus on fixing the technical problems first.

Compared to Dragon Age: Origins this game is totally uninspired and boring. It seems they took everything that was good in the prequel, removed it and replaced it with everything that was bad in DA:O. The combat system is too simplified and the story never takes off.

It is a nice city-building/politics simulator that doesn't take itself very seriously. Contains a nice campaign with 20 missions (but only 10 unique maps). However compared to Tropico 3 this game offers almost nothing new and is more like an expansion. If you own Tropico 3, don't bother wasting money on this.

City building games have sadly been ignored by the game companies for a long time. Simcity Societies was a huge disappointment and Sierra's city builder-series seems to have ended with Caesar IV. Therefore it's nice to see a new addition in this genre. Cities XL 2011 is a worthy successor to Simcity 4. Many things which I found irritating in SC 4 are much better in Cities XL such as micromanagement with utilities and public transportation. This allows the player to concentrate in the more enjoyable parts of city building. The trading aspect from original multiplayer Cities XL is still there and it encourages to specialize the cities so that the player can trade utilities and products between them. There is a lot of nice landmarks and special buildings which offer a nice challenge to build. This all is very nice and makes for a very addictive city building experience. However, the game suffers from major technical issues that make playing it a pain. The game slows down to an unplayable crawl very quickly because some memory leak issues. Focus hasn't so far done anything to fix these issues and therefore the game is not enjoyable to play as it is. Unless these issues are patched I really can't recommend buying Cities XL 2011.